People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered. Love them anyway.

Kent M. Keith wrote this line as the opening maxim of his “Paradoxical Commandments,” a set of aphorisms composed while he was a Harvard undergraduate in the late 1960s and later circulated widely in self-help and service-oriented contexts. The commandments were intended as practical ethical counsel for people trying to do good work—especially in leadership, public service, or humanitarian settings—despite predictable human flaws such as ingratitude, suspicion, or selfishness. The text gained a second life through frequent reprinting and adaptation (often without attribution), and it became associated in popular memory with Mother Teresa after a version was reportedly displayed in a Calcutta home for children, though Keith is the original author.

The sentence acknowledges a sober view of human behavior—people often act irrationally and egocentrically—yet it refuses to let that reality determine one’s moral posture. “Love them anyway” frames love not as a reward for good conduct but as a chosen commitment that persists in the face of disappointment. The paradox is deliberate: the very reasons one might withhold compassion are presented, then overridden by an ethical imperative. In Keith’s broader scheme, the point is resilience in doing good: one’s actions should be grounded in principle and character rather than in the hope of consistent fairness, gratitude, or rationality from others.

1) “People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered; forgive them anyway.”
2) “People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered. Love them anyway.” (as circulated in “The Paradoxical Commandments”)
3) “People are unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered. Love them anyway.”